The persistent myth roaming about corporate America is that they can’t find the employees they need and, ergo, they must look to importing aliens to do “jobs Americans won’t do”.

We hear this over and over again. If you tell a big lie often enough it gets believed.

I was therefore delighted to find a sterling riposte to this myth in none other than the citadel of corporate conservatism, the Wall Street Journal. It is written by Dr. Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor professor of management at the Wharton School and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources

Folks, understand right up front what this author doesn’t say is as important as what he does. His entire article is devoted to why corporate America needs to employ Americans, but never actually says it should stop whoring after more work visas for aliens. I’m ok on this, Cappelli really makes that case without stating it directly—perhaps thus smuggling it past the WSJ editors.

At the top of this nearly full Page One article is a picture of two big brown shoes under the headline “Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need”.

And between the shoes are columns of percentages, each with a comment.

For example, the top one: “52% of US companies report difficulty filing jobs”. Directly below

“47% of employers blame prospects’ lack of “hard” job skills.”

“35% of companies cite candidates’ lack of experience.”

“25% of companies blame lack of business knowledge or formal qualifications”.

“28% of companies are increasing staff training and development.” “

Source: Manpower Group.”

But the subhead for Cappelli’s article completely belies those statements. “The conventional wisdom is that our education system is failing our economy. But our companies deserve a lot of the blame themselves”!!! [Why Companies Aren't Getting the Employees They Need, October 24, 2011]

Blaming corporate America is not the usual fare for the WSJ!

Cappelli plunges right into his main thesis:

“Everybody's heard the complaints about recruiting lately.

Even with unemployment hovering around 9%, companies are grousing that they can't find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting.

Employers are quick to lay blame. Schools aren't giving kids the right kind of training. The government isn't letting in enough high-skill immigrants. The list goes on and on.

But I believe that the real culprits are the employers themselves.”

He then says what patriotic immigration reformers advocates have been saying all along:

“With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are demanding more of job candidates than ever before. They want prospective workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time.

In other words, to get a job, you have to have that job already. It's a Catch-22 situation for workers—and it's hurting companies and the economy.

To get America's job engine revving again, companies need to stop pinning so much of the blame on our nation's education system. They need to drop the idea of finding perfect candidates and look for people who could do the job with a bit of training and practice.

There are plenty of ways to get workers up to speed without investing too much time and money, such as putting new employees on extended probationary periods and relying more on internal hires, who know the ropes better than outsiders would.

It's a fundamental change from business as usual. But the way we're doing things now just isn't working.”

Cappelli then boldly recites what he dubs “The Big Myths” held by business:

“The perceptions about a lack of skilled workers are pervasive. The staffing company ManpowerGroup, for instance, reports that 52% of U.S. employers surveyed say they have difficulty filling positions because of talent shortages.

But the problem is an illusion.

Some of the complaints about skill shortages boil down to the fact that employers can't get candidates to accept jobs at the wages offered. That's an affordability problem, not a skill shortage. [My emphasis—DAC] A real shortage means not being able to find appropriate candidates at market-clearing wages. We wouldn't say there is a shortage of diamonds when they are incredibly expensive; we can buy all we want at the prevailing prices.

The real problem, then, is more appropriately an inflexibility problem. Finding candidates to fit jobs is not like finding pistons to fit engines, where the requirements are precise and can't be varied. Jobs can be organized in many different ways so that candidates who have very different credentials can do them successfully.

Only about 10% of the people in IT jobs during the Silicon Valley tech boom of the 1990s, for example, had IT-related degrees. While it might be great to have a Ph.D. graduate read your electrical meter, almost anyone with a little training could do the job pretty well.”

This guy is really reciting a major truths as his next main point is headlined, “A Training Shortage” in which he says,

“And make no mistake: There are plenty of people out there who could step into jobs with just a bit of training—even recent graduates who don't have much job experience. Despite employers' complaints about the education system, college students are pursuing more vocationally oriented course work than ever before, with degrees in highly specialized fields like pharmaceutical marketing and retail logistics.

Unfortunately, American companies don't seem to do training anymore. Data are hard to come by, but we know that apprenticeship programs have largely disappeared, along with management-training programs. And the amount of training that the average new hire gets in the first year or so could be measured in hours and counted on the fingers of one hand. Much of that includes what vendors do when they bring in new equipment: "Here's how to work this copier."

The shortage of opportunities to learn on the job helps explain the phenomenon of people queuing up for unpaid internships, in some cases even paying to get access to a situation where they can work free to get access to valuable on-the-job experience.

Companies in other countries do things differently. In Europe, for instance, training is often mandated, and apprenticeships and other programs that help provide work experience are part of the infrastructure.

The result: European countries aren't having skill-shortage complaints at the same level as in the U.S., and the nations that have the most established apprenticeship programs—the Scandinavian nations, Germany and Switzerland—have low unemployment.”

As I noted at the beginning, labor allocations expert Cappelli does not criticize over-dependence on work visas for alien labor specifically, he does in urge the hiring of American workers:

“That is a real problem. What's the answer?

We aren't going to get European-style apprenticeships in the U.S. They require too much cooperation among employers and bigger investments in infrastructure than any government entity is willing to provide. We're also not going to go back to the lifetime-employment models that made years-long training programs possible.

But I'm also convinced that some of the problem we're up against is simply a failure of imagination. Here are three ways in which employees can get the skills they need without the employer having to invest in a lot of up front training.

Work with education providers: If job candidates don't have the skills you need, make them go to school before you hire them….

Bring back aspects of apprenticeship: In this arrangement, apprentices are paid less while they are mastering their craft—so employers aren't paying for training and a big salary at the same time. Accounting firms, law firms and professional-services firms have long operated this way, and have made lots of money off their young associates….

Promote from within: Employees have useful knowledge that no outsider could have and should make great candidates for filling jobs higher up. In recent years, however, an incredible two-thirds of all vacancies, even in large companies, have been filled by hiring from the outside, according to data from Taleo Corp., a talent-management company. That figure has dropped somewhat lately because of market conditions. But a generation ago, the number was close to 10%, as internal promotions and transfers were used to fill virtually all positions….

These are substantive way to help our unemployment situation—and cut down on the cultural, environmental and economic upsets which our current mass immigration policy exacerbates.

The unemployment problem? It's really simple; hire and train the millions of Americans ready to work who are waiting in line right now!

Donald A. Collins [email him], a free lance writer living in Washington, DC. , is a long-time board member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR). However, his views are his own.